God is so quiet

[LadyForCamus]

This is precisely where we disagree.  How could it be logically possible for existence to fail at existing?  If existence fails to exist, that suggests there was some potential for existence that was never actualized.  This potential, what ever it hypothetically is or could be, would still be something.  Not nothing. 

You are overthinking this. What if there was no potential for existence? Is that conceivable? 

I’ll answer that question with a question, if I may.  What is the logical alternative to existence?

Nothing. Not anything. Existence did not happen. There is nothing mysterious about this concept. Just...nothing at all.

Steve, do you realize that just by saying, ‘nothing is’, as in: ‘nothing is an alternative to something’, or that ‘nothing could have been’, you’re already talking about nothing as though it were, in fact, something?  I think you’re the one overthinking it.  As soon as you attempt to conceptualize nothing as an alternative, you’ve already screwed the pooch, because ‘nothing’ cannot be an alternative. It can’t be anything. I would say with reasonable certainty that existence did NOT happen. That’s my entire argument: existence has always existed, because that’s what existence is, and what it does. There is no such possible thing as nothing. Not even in concept.

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Dean Rickles says it more perfectly than I:

‘What kind of possible world could instantiate there being nothing?’